YouTube announces 'News Feed' showcasing top citizen journalism

To tap into the growing market of Web-savvy news junkies, YouTube has announced its testing a new feature called News Feed. The feature incorporates news videos from both citizen journalists and professional news outlets.

YouTube may be famous for quirky videos, but with 24 hours of video footage uploaded every minute to the site, there is also a lot of news being reported.

Working with the the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, YouTube announced it is creating a News Feed designed to help Web-goers find breaking news videos. In total, three journalism-school students and grads from Berkeley are working at YouTube for the summer on the project, the school announced.

In addition to finding and organizing video, YouTube will be working with media organizations to expand their presence online.

YouTube's News Feed will focus on breaking news, highlighting the most recent videos, as well as videos that showcase impressive visuals and video content from citizen journalists.The News Feed can be found on YouTube's CitizenTube where the company has collected and showcased news videos in the past.

CitizenTube showcases a lot of citizen journalism work, including not-so-friendly encounters with politicians, international protests and gorillas attempting escape from a zoo.

A few examples include one roving reporter who got a South Carolina congressman running for governor to admit his campaign commercial incorrectly states he is retired from the US Army (watch the video); a video of a bomb going off in a crowded rally in Nairobi, Kenya (watch it here); and activists who took to the streets of Tehran to mark the one-year anniversary of the Iranian election (the video is here).

Politicians will also find it important to remember everyone with a camera is a potential reporter, as the video below clearly demonstrates. In it, U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-NC, aggressively grabs a student who approached him on a sidewalk to ask about his support for the Obama administration. He later apologized.

If you're a citizen journliasts or freelancer, you can Tweet YouTube @citizentube to let them know you uploaded a video that may be of interest.